Editorial: State politicians need to pick up the pace

Wednesday

Jul 5, 2017 at 3:55 PMJul 5, 2017 at 3:55 PM

Jesse Collings

As the public waits for the members of the Massachusetts Legislature, residents must ask themselves what the repercussions of politicians who continue to delay the budget will be. The state is currently in its fifth day without a spending plan for fiscal 2018 and it doesn’t seem lawmakers are too concerned.

On Monday, July 3, despite the fact the budget was three days overdue, members of the Massachusetts House met for just four minutes before calling it a day, sending the state into the holiday without a permanent budget. The new fiscal year began on Saturday, July 1 with lawmakers passing a temporary $5.15 million budget to pay the bills while they continue to debate the new budget.

In addition to the tardiness, the public does not know many specific details about what issues may be responsible for the delay. Officials have been mum on the subject and the six conference committees that are charged with arranging the budget plans have met privately and have not disclosed any information about their discussions.

As of Wednesday, Massachusetts is just one of six states to not have a budget in place for the fiscal year. Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin also do not have budgets approved. Massachusetts, Illinois and Wisconsin are states that employ full-time legislators, meaning that their legislature has a larger staff and is better-compensated than other, non-full time legislatures, which makes it a tad more embarrassing that they did not have their budgets approved by the June 30 deadline.

Lethargic legislation is not an infrequent occurrence this year, as legislation regulating the recreational sale of marijuana continues to be delayed. Despite voters approving recreational sale and use of marijuana in November, the state legislature has continued to drag its feet on implementing any regulations and recreational sale still feels like a ways away from taking place in the state.

The most notable accomplishment the legislature has had since reconvening in January has been an increase in the salaries of various public officials, including themselves, which bumped up the average salary of a Mass. legislature to $62,547, the sixth highest in the nation according to ballotpedia.com. Despite that increase in salary and the assurance of officials that the increase in pay would allow them to dedicate all of their professional time to their roles in the legislature, the Mass. budget remains in limbo.

In any profession, when a task is assigned with a deadline and the task is not completed by that deadline, there are repercussions from their employers. The legislatures in both the House and the Senate work for the residents of Massachusetts, and they have not been able to meet their deadlines. What will the people of Massachusetts do to ensure that those deadlines are met in the future? What punishment will befell legislatures so that they know their belatedness will not be tolerated?